River Abava

Route: Plosti-> Bridge Veģi (~19km)
We…: I, Wilx, Amanda, Tīna, Aija, Ziema

Weather was just perfect for going on the river – not cold, not hot. Sun didn’t “bother “ us with its presence, clouds didn’t think about disappearing none of days, but anyway it was worm. The only one unpleasant thing – on Saturday time to time blew quite strong headwind, so I can’t say that we could have rest – we had to row.

This trip started with few obstacles – there was supposed to be one more traveler, there was problem with finding car for getting to start point, owner of the house near the river at start point. We usually try to find house where leave car in start and finish points while going on river. Till now we were lucky, almost always men of the house were encouraging and kindly let us leave our car near the house or even in the yard. This time the man was nasty. Greeted impolitely: “This is becoming as habit… no you could not…”. He kind of didn’t chase away, but expected me to turn around and go away. But I said that we are not coming with our hands empty, I gave him our refreshments and gifts and parked my car in place he pointed.

I was kind of disappointed in river Abava. Flow almost none, sights also nothing special (but that didn’t bother me a lot), in headwind boat was floating back, people on river were a lot more than I expected (lot of canoe drew ahead). On the banks of river were lot of camping places, what also shows that this river is popular among the river travelers.

But all in all everything was fine and river tip turned really good. After first day rowing and funny quarrel, we came to Rapid of Abava. Nice. We shuffled our boats, went a little bit more down the river and found camping place (camping paces before Rabid of Abava are more than after).
Second day we had to go by the river just some 5km. Those we meritoriously drifted till finish point. Paddles were used only time to time not to let boats slide in banks. On the way we stopped at Sventes mill funicular (right after the camping place).